Engineering Manager - Next-Gen Retail Commerce Platform

We are partnering with a global leader in retail technology to recruit experienced Engineering Managers to lead the development of their flagship AI-native commerce platform. This platform powers point-of-sale, mobile, self-service, and back-of-store operations for many of the world's largest retailers. If you've used self-checkout, paid at a big-box retailer, or shopped at leading grocery or apparel brands, you've likely interacted with their software.

This is a rare opportunity to lead high-impact engineering teams building the next chapter of their platform - focused on AI-native development tooling, agentic capabilities, and a high-ownership engineering model where teams deliver end-to-end.

What You'll Own

- End-to-end delivery, quality, and team health for one or more product areas.
- Execution excellence: milestone planning, sprint delivery, technical risk management, and production quality.
- People leadership: hiring, performance management, career development, compensation, and timely tough conversations.
- Technical depth: staying hands-on enough to contribute in design reviews, debug production issues, and challenge architectural tradeoffs alongside Principal Engineers.
- Product and customer ownership: deep understanding of architecture, backlog priorities, market performance, and owning customer escalations.

The role level (first-line through senior manager) will be matched to your experience, team size, and the complexity of products you've led.

What We're Looking For





- Strong software engineering background with a proven track record shipping production systems at scale.
- Deep foundations in Java
- Demonstrated leadership experience - This includes hiring, developing, performance managing, and (when needed) exiting team members.
- Solid working knowledge of modern Agile, SDLC, CI/CD, and continuous deployment practices.
- Ability to move fluidly between high-level architecture discussions, debugging sessions, executive updates, and team standups.
- A direct, low-ego, accountable leadership style - you own commitments, communicate clearly, and recover strongly from setbacks.
- Experience with AI-assisted development workflows (coding agents, AI-driven testing, RAG tooling, or agentic CI/CD).
- Background in retail, payments, POS, or other high-stakes transaction systems.
- Experience leading distributed or multi-site teams.

How They Work

Engineering owns delivery end-to-end. There is no heavy PMO layer - managers and engineers drive plans, call risks, and ship the product. Horizontal functions exist to support and unblock, while heavy investment in AI tooling reduces coordination overhead without reducing accountability.This is a high-trust environment built for leaders who want real ownership and impact. If you're a strong technical leader ready for your next management role (or an experienced Engineering Manager seeking greater scale), we'd love to speak with you confidentially.

The position offers competitive compensation and hybrid/flexible working arrangements in a solid tech hub.

📌 Engineering Manager (Melbourne)
🏢 Talon Recruitment Solutions
📍 Melbourne